2014 World's Largest Grocery Chains

Of the 250 World’s Largest Retail chains, 25% of them are classified as strictly being supermarket and grocery store food retailers. That's according to the 2014 Global Powers of Retailing report from Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and STORES Magazine, which is published annually as a global benchmark comparison of the annual revenues of the biggest retail chains of all times.

When taken as a whole, Europe dominates the world's food retailing, with 26 of the largest 63 supermarket companies based in European countries.

Only 16 of the largest U.S. based supermarket and grocery store chains have revenues high enough to be ranked alongside the largest retailers in the world.

It's not necessarily just the population numbers that make European and U.S. supermarket and grocery store chains so dominant, it's also the fact that their food industries and distribution systems support large chains, which then put small, independent food retailing competitors out of business. Food retailing in other countries around the world is often more fragmented, disorganized, and not oriented towards large regional and national corporate mega-chains.

What follows is the complete list of the 2014 World’s Largest Retail Supermarket and Grocery Store Chains. The number in the left column represents the revenue ranking of the retail chain, compared to the revenue rankings of the 250 largest retail chains of all types included on the 2014 Global Powers of Retailing list.

Click the links for more information about individual supermarket chains and for more World’s Largest Retail ranking information.

The largest supermarket chains in the world are based in Europe, but the Top 200 grocery store retail companies in the world in terms of annual revenue also include supermarket chains based in South Africa, China, Japan, Russia, and Chile. This is according to the most recent Global Powers of Retailing report from Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and STORES Magazine, which provides a global benchmark comparison of all types of the world's largest retail chains.

Global food retail sales are more than $4 trillion annually, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). While the U.S. supermarket chain Kroger continues to hold the title of the world's largest supermarket chain in terms of annual revenue, the largest U.S. based retail supermarket and grocery store chains are not as dominant as might be expected. One of the reasons for this is because of the number of hypermarkets like Walmart, Costco, Target, and Sam's Club that are expanding their retail food sales every year.

While U.S. hypermarket chains - and other global hypermarket chains - may actually sell more groceries than some of the largest supermarket chains on this list, hypermarkets are not included here because their sale of other goods makes their revenue figures incomparable to retail chains that primarily sell groceries.

This is a continuation of the complete list of the 2014 World’s Largest Retail Supermarket and Grocery Store Chains. The number in the left column represents the revenue ranking of the retail chain, compared to the revenue rankings of the 250 largest retail chains included on the 2014 Global Powers list. Click the links for more information about individual supermarket chains and for more World’s Largest Retail rankings.